A bright new voice in the wilderness

A great, big novel

Sandy Huseby: How did you prepare yourself to write Into the Wilderness?
Sara Donati: The novel started as an interest in bringing together two fictional worlds. I wanted to take Jane Austen's very reserved female characters out of their upper-middle-class English neighborhoods and put them on James Fenimore Cooper's New York frontier with people who had survived brutal wars and harsh conditions. It has often been pointed out that Jane Austen's characters never deal with the issues of her time -- slavery, revolution, women's rights, colonialism. But all these things were going on.
    The novel required a huge amount of research on every front, especially as I really like to weave real characters and events into the fictional storyline. I probably read -- in whole or part -- some 300 books. The most difficult and challenging part was probably the history of the Mohawk in this period, as their struggle to survive was a central aspect of life on the frontier at this time.

SH: This book puts you in the company of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series and Colleen McCullough's Thorn Birds. What's your vision for novels of such sweeping scale?
BD: To really work, the author has to find harmony between plot and character development. Storytelling is crucial, of course -- a good story is what makes the reader turn the page. In big historical novels, there are usually multiple plot lines woven together thread by thread, entangling the reader. If it works, the reader is desperate to know what happens next, but hopefully she also wants to know why it happens, why these characters do the things they do. The storytelling has to evolve from strong characters with real and tangible motivations. A great "big" novel satisfies on many levels, I think.

REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY

Travel to the edge of the American frontier and beyond in Sara Donati's debut novel, Into the Wilderness.

Elizabeth Middleton is determined to prove she's more than capable of choosing her own destiny. Her plan, abetted by Nathaniel Bonner, is to teach school to all the community's children, not just the privileged few. The men in her life -- her father with his plan to marry her off suitably and Nathaniel with his secret plans to court her -- test every facet of Elizabeth's spirit in the exotic landscape where civilization meets post-revolutionary America.

Just as Elizabeth confronts the differences between her cosseted English upbringing and the unknowns of her new life, Nathaniel balances parallel life paths, as a white man and as a man whom the Mohawk people know as Between-Two-Lives.

Epic in scope, emotionally intense, Into the Wilderness is an enrapturing, grand adventure.


A Thorney issue

In My Dearest Enemy by Connie Brockway, an adventurer returns to his home to confront the upstart woman who has usurped his heritage.

Avery Thorne feels that he is entitled to his uncle's estate. The terms of the will, however, give Lily Bede the opportunity to acquire it.

Lily and Avery are established adversaries, embroiled in a battle of wits. Yet Avery, the adventurer, and Lily, the suffragist, discover that their very competitiveness just might help Uncle Horatio's bequest reach its rightful resolution.

Brockway, like her characters, is gifted in the spirited gamesmanship of quick-witted and beguiling storytelling.

A match made in Texas

Mix one marriage-shy bachelor guardian with a lady entrepreneur of independent spirit, stir in a trio of nieces determined to unite them, and you've got a recipe for The Bad Luck Wedding Cake by Geralyn Dawson.

Claire Donovan and Tye McBride each need to marry. He needs a mother for his nieces, she needs a husband to take the curse off the family's "magic" baking ingredient.

Dawson has cooked up a confection that's not too sweet, not too tart -- a tasty reading morsel blending delicious humor and open-hearted warmth.

On the run

No two families could be more opposite than the Arinelli sisters and the Cameron clan, yet they are woven together like colorful tartan plaid in When Venus Fell by Deborah Smith.

As Venus herself notes, the sisters Arinelli were always running from crimes they didn't commit. Their father was imprisoned for anti-government activity, and Venus and her sisters cannot seem to escape this legacy.

Gib Cameron's invitation to stop running lures the sisters to the rustic mountain valley refuge where Venus and Gib are forced to face the past -- and the demons of fear and distrust.

Smith's Brigadoon-like valley is peopled with vivid, eccentric characters. Their painful, exhilarating journeys of self-discovery prove Deborah Smith to be a storyteller of distinction.

Still running

When the bliss of romance gives way to the harsh, dangerous reality of a marriage gone wrong, flight becomes the only way to survive in Say Goodbye to Daddy by Susan Bowden.

Vanessa Marston escapes with her son Roddy from her volatile marriage to Colin Craigmore and the suffocating stronghold of his aristocratic Scottish family.

In far-away Canada, Grant Kendall rescues the pair, only to become as much of a threat to Vanessa as the husband she left behind. Why, she wonders, does Kendall have a photo of her and her son taken at the Craigmore family Christmas just two days earlier?

Bowden's transition from Regency writing to this fast-paced contemporary intrigue is accomplished and mesmerizing.

Sandy Huseby writes and reviews from her homes in Fargo, North Dakota, and Nevis, Minnesota. She is online at Shuseby@aol.com

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